E-Books: Advantages and Disadvantages

Introduction

Over the past five years huge changes have come to the publishing industry due in no small part to the rise of electronic book and reading devices for them. This development has shown a good deal of promise and progress over the past decade but only recently has its marketable and organizational potential made it evident. Various layers have made changes to incorporate e books into their day to day workings. Vendors, libraries, higher learning institutions, vendors and consumers have responded in a number of different ways over the last ten years. There are a number of issues that the industry has had to address from new filing systems to copyright nuances that regular print media did not need to address. Electronic readers and books have advantages of portability, ease of use, inexpensiveness and the simple fact the one reader can host a vast number of books make their market appeal evident. Other institutions and industries have had to adjust their practices to adapt their business models to use these new developments to their advantage. (Lichtenberg, 2011, p. 101) Although a litany of technical and legal issues has made and continues to make transitioning to electronic media difficult new demographics and technologies make the future of e-books a near certainty.

Copyright and Legal Issues

• Vendors and publishers can have varied  copyright claims in the already decentralized industry with varied practices but contracts are designed to favor, and thus attract, authors. (Williams, 2011, p. 20-21)
  
• Intellectual property, in text or images, in a digital file that can be downloaded makes securing copyrights very difficult. (Ibid., pp. 22- 25)
• Whether e-books are to be entirely novel pieces of information technology, with much more than straight forward text, or direct imitations of print books is one point of contention. (Watson, 2004, p. 8; Lichtenberg, 2011, p. 108)

Uses and Challenges for Libraries' use of E-books

• E-book production initially took off in the mid-nineties with popular and scholarly presses like Random House and ACLS going digital. (Little, 2011, p. 536)
• In the late 1990’s “dot com” boom some e-book use began but did not develop. (Watson, 2004, p. 33)
• Publishers are pushing for (or rather new technologies are pushing them to) more dynamic approaches to selling books to better capitalize on the growing market. (Lichtenberg, 2011, p. 102, p. 105)
• The Open Book Forum, or OeBF, formed to form trade standards to promote the sale of e-books both publically and to libraries. (Watson, 2004, p. 9)
• Ebrary is a more research oriented tool while EBL allows for various kinds of use with it multi user lending (a more accessible feature from Netlibrary that would only allow one borrower per e-book). (Watson, 2004, pp. 11-13)
• Other more public services, like Google books and HaithiTrust are totally public and host copyright protected material (in approved snippets). (Little, 2011, p. 536)
• Other problems of e-book introduction also arise as balancing publishers’ and libraries’ (especially academic and research) needs can be difficult even with something as flexible as an e-book. (Watson, 2004, p. 15)
• MARC (Machine Readable Catalogue) has made registering e-books easier but tougher when consolidating them within a preexisting print collection and makes little reference to an entry being an electronic resource rather than a physical one. (Sapon-White, 2012, p. 45-6)
• Inconsistent compositions, some having cover pages, other beginning with a table of contents and no publishers’ information, made making complete bibliographic entries difficult. (Ibid., p. 50)
• E-books also fundamentally altered the library workflow cutting out those usually in charge of new acquisitions and their non-physical presence negated the need for the Dewey Decimal System. (Ibid., p. 49, p. 51; Little, 2011, p. 357)
• The obvious advantages of digital archives for libraries cannot be denied as they save space and save a good deal of money in maintenance costs. (Little, 2011, p. 357)
• Some have also expressed consternation over the potential of e-lending taking the market for people buying digital books but, based on lending and physical sales of physical books, that is an unlikely scenario. (Fialkoff, 2012, 8)

E-Books in the Marketplace

• A study from 2007 (using e-readers from 2003) found that readers in book clubs did not prefer digital copies to their paper predecessors. (Landoni, 2007, p. 599, p. 604)
• They did provide that digital books were easier to carry, a trait that is often cited as a key factor in their attractiveness. (Ibid., p.600; Lichtenberg 2011, p. 110; Sun, 2012, p. 64)
• Their inexpensive nature, portability, and potential of “active reading” (i.e. putting notes along important section) made their reception among undergraduate students more favorable. (Sun, 2012, p. 64-66)
• E-books have also been very favorably by child oriented education developers that see potential for using digital media as enjoyable and didactic, though not necessarily teaching tools. (Barack, 2012, p. 12)
• Amazon’s Kindle (2007), the 2008 Sony Reader, Barnes and Noble’s Nook from 2009, and Apple’s 2010 iPad (though not a, strictly speaking, dedicated e-reader its reader App has rendered it as an important player in the e-book market) have all brought easy access to the market. (Little, 2011, p. 536)
• Search engines (i.e. Google), online retailers like Amazon, and e-readers make publishing companies need to enter digital media to reach wider audiences. (Lichtenberg, 2011, p. 107)
• E-book devices have seen huge spurts in sales, from three to six million devices sold between 2009-2010, while digital book sales themselves held, as of 2011, ten percent of the total market and thirty five percent of the best seller market. (Sapon-White, 2012, p. 45; Williams, 2011, p. 24; Lichtenberg, 2011, p. 103)
• Though these may not seem to be vastly significant figures, one must consider the youth of the market and the growing young reader demographic that is more accustomed to reading through non print media. (Little, 2011, p. 357)
• Reader apps for iPads and smartphones have opened the market in huge ways that put pressure on publishers and vendors to get books into appropriate formats. (Lichtenberg, 2011, p. 110)

Conclusion

            E-books offer the publishing industry and libraries a huge opportunity to develop new and more versatile products. The possibilities afforded by e-books make the dissemination of knowledge not only fast but cheaper and more interactive. Consumers drive the book market faster and with more ease that with inaccessible or expensive physical media. Multimedia books will also open the door to more dynamic book types that will encourage readership and help develop more advanced book-keeping systems. Libraries can become more efficient, smaller and able to produce more with a relative paucity of infrastructure.

Works Cited

            Lauren Barack.  (2012, February). Apps, Shmapps. It's About Story. School Library Journal, 58(2), 12. Retrieved March 2, 2012, from ABI/INFORM Global. (DocumentID: 2570739131).

            This short piece illustrated ways in which some companies are trying to incorporate e-books into their business models.

            Francine Fialkoff. (2012, March). "Friction" and Progress. Library Journal, 137(4), 8. Retrieved March 2,  2012, from ABI/INFORM Global. (Document ID: 2590875331).

            Fialkoff, though not peer reviewed, addressed the potential for e-book lending to derail e-book sales.

             Lichtenberg, J.. (2011). In from the Edge: The Progressive Evolution of Publishing in the Age of Digital Abundance. Publishing Research Quarterly, 27(2), 101-112. Retrieved March 1, 2012, from Humanities Module. (Document ID: 2383974801).

            This was a well-researched, market oriented article that addressed the different technologies and their relative market potential. 

            Little, G. (2011). The Book is Dead, Long Live the Book! Journal of Academic Librarianship, 37(6), 536. Retrieved March 2, 2012, from Social Science Module. (Document ID: 2539084411).

            Little’s article takes a comprehensive look at the advantages afforded by electronic resources for consumers and libraries. 

Monica Landoni, & Gillian Hanlon. (2007). E-book reading groups: interacting with e-books in public libraries. The Electronic Library, 25(5), 599-612. Retrieved March 2, 2012, from Education Module. (Document ID: 1373505941).

            This smaller case study illustrated a potential market problem for the growth of e-books but affirmed their most often cited advantages. 

Paula D Watson. (2004). RICH OFFERINGS: E-PUBLISHING GROWTH AREAS. Library Technology Reports, 40(6), 7-39. Retrieved March 2, 2012, from Social Science Module. (Document ID: 749894141).

            This chapter brought up new platforms for lending and selling e-books and their potential problems regarding copyright and customer attraction.

            Sapon-White, R.. (2012). Kindles and Kindle E-Books in an Academic Library. Library Resources & Technical Services, 56(1), 45-52. Retrieved March 1, 2012, from Social Science Module. (Document ID: 2565615751).

            This case study brought up basic issues surrounding incorporation of digital resources into an academic library.

            Sun, J., Flores, J., & Tanguma, J.. (2012). E-Textbooks and Students' Learning Experiences. Decision Sciences Journal of Innovative Education, 10(1), 63-77. Retrieved March 1, 2012, from Business Module. (Document ID: 2558825931).

            Sun and Tanguma addressed how useful e-books are for higher level education customers as very active members in the book market. 

            Williams, E.. (2011). Copyright, E-books and the Unpredictable Future. Publishing Research Quarterly, 27(1), 19-25. Retrieved March 1, 2012, from Humanities Module. (Document ID: 2338999611).

            Williams addressed how difficult e-books make maintenance of copyright contracts and the conflicts between vendors and material holders.